Getting wild in Wales

Apparently if I spend too long in the country at any one time, I burst in to flames or something. Because I've been keeping up my holiday-a-month quota for 4 months now. Admittedly, my latest adventure wasn't quite so exotic as we were only a stones throw away in Wales, but it was so much fun! After a 3 hour westward drive on Friday night, we arrived in Llanrwst at The Eagles Hotel which was super cute and looked like a castle. In a very unlike-Jenni fashion, I was in flats all weekend! On Friday night I wore red trousers with white floral embroidered top and converse to go for dinner at the restaurant, which was really nice.

Then after a wake up call at the ungodly hour of 5am, we got ready and headed for ZipWorld, home to the longest zip wire in Europe and the fastest zip wire in the world. Luckily, we managed to just avoid the rain so that our very stylish overalls didn't get wet! I wouldn't exactly say the zip wire was scary but it was definitely exhilarating and the views as you go over the quarry are amazing! Also, it's worth noting that two zip lines run at the same time on each of the different tracks and I ended up as the overall winner on the both (yay for me).

Then as the heavens opened again (its Wales, it always rains in Wales), we headed to Betws-y-coed for some breakfast before moving on to the Zip World Fforest site, where we did the forest coaster (a toboggan through the woods). That one was really fun, especially when you ignore the advice to put your breaks on round all the corners (and ignore the advice not to use your phone because if you don't take photos then did it even happen?)

Then in case we hadn't done enough already, we drove down to Surf Snowdonia for a beginners lesson in how to surf. With my lack of balance, it's needless to say I wasn't exactly a natural. We all managed to catch a lot of waves and get on our knees towards the end but none of us were anywhere near standing up and spent more time under the water than on the board. But it was really fun and the actual place is really cool because the lake is man-made and you get guaranteed good waves every 3 minutes. Which is both good and bad because when you're as bad as us lot were, it takes you the whole 3 minutes to struggle back from the shore and in to position. I can definitely see why surfing fanatics (such as Cameron Diaz) are so fit though because it's really tiring. And what's the best thing to do when you're tired? A total-wipeout-style obstacle course obviously. And because we'd all spent the last hour pulling ourselves up on to our surf boards, using our arm muscles to get ourself on a giant inflatable slide, pull ourselves along a climbing wall or hang ourselves off of monkey bars was totally out of the question (and totally hilarious to even attempt it). Although we did manage the less strenuous part of it; blobbing. This part of it was the first thing that scared me all day. You basically jump off a diving board on to a giant pillow, shuffle forward and someone else jumps on and you go flying off the end. But I kept worrying that I wouldn't land right (because you had to try and land on your back) so actually forcing myself to jump was quite hard! I managed it though and did it 3 times just for good measure.

Despite still being in flat shoes, I still got myself mildly dressed up to go to the only other restaurant in town (let's just say that we weren't exactly in a bustling city centre) and I wore red jumpsuit, black bralet and converse. The restaurant was really nice and had loads of cute teacup/teapot decorations around the room. The food was amazing too - the fried camembert was especially good!

Then after a hearty breakfast at our hotel (hearty meaning absolutely fucking massive), we went to the third Zip World site to do the Caverns. This was the part I hadn't thought about much and hadn't really appreciated what it would be like. I'm not scared of much but this genuinely terrified me! It's basically a mix of zip lining and wall climbing, underground through caves. And it's down to you to clip yourself on to the wire as you go along and to secure your own zip line at each stage. Some of the sheer drops below you were ridiculous! It also didn't help that one of the worst bits of the course was at the start so they really chuck you in at the deep end, but I'm a big believer in doing the things that scare you most and I'm so glad I did. There was also an optional extra bit at the end to do the steepest zip line in the UK which we did (because when you've got that far, you can't exactly take the easy route) and then we rewarded ourselves with a well deserved ice cream!

It might be a downside that Wales literally rains non-stop but for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction and the upside is all the gorgeous green landscapes that stretch as far as the eye can see (and sheep everywhere because stereotypes exist for a reason). Landscapes that we got to enjoy as we drove to our final activity of the weekend; a gliding experience that me and Aidan had got Dad a voucher for for his birthday. So Aidan got his turn to go up in the plane but by the time it was dad's turn to go up, it had started raining (shock) and so they had to cancel it! Given that that's what we had built the whole weekend around, that's irony at it's finest. So he's got to go back some time in the next year to take attempt number 2 at his gliding, so maybe this isn't the last of our family holidays after all. Watch this space!